Facet manager

This is for:

Merchandiser
Important

The Facet manager is currently in closed beta. Contact your Coveo representative to learn about the Facet manager and get involved.

The Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH) Facet manager is a tool that merchandisers can use to optimize how customers explore and filter products across Coveo-powered storefronts. facets are dynamic filters that help users narrow down their search results based on specific attributes such as brand, price, category, or other custom product attributes. With this tool, merchandisers can configure facet collections that apply in product listing and search results pages.

Facet collection displayed for a search| Coveo

Facets in a facet collection can be configured to be either manually pinned or selected by relevance:

  • Manually pinned facets are manually selected by the merchandiser and will always appear in the facet collection. They will always appear at the top of the facet list, regardless of the visitor’s query or the listing page they’re on. This lets you ensure that certain facets are always visible and easily accessible to visitors. See Manually pinned facets for more information.

  • Facets selected by relevance are dynamically determined by Coveo based on the visitor’s query or the listing page they’re on. Merchandisers can decide how many of these to display in the facet collection. See Facets selected by relevance for more information.

Prerequisites

To create and manage facet collections in the CMH, you must have:

  • Updated Headless to version 3.24.1 or later. While this isn’t a strict requirement, it’s highly recommended to ensure compatibility with the latest features and improvements.

  • Enabled the following field options on the Fields (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page of the Coveo Administration Console for every field that you want to use as a facet in the CMH:

    • Select the Facet or Multi-value facet option to make the field facetable. This makes the field a facet field, which means that it can be used to filter search results based on its values.

    • Enable Facet Generator for every facet field that should be eligible for relevance-based selection.

Note

A field can be configured as a facet field even if the Facet Generator isn’t enabled for that field. This means that you can use the field as a manually pinned facet, but it won’t be automatically selected based on relevance.

Limitations

Facet management in the CMH is currently in closed beta and in active development. At this stage, you can’t use the CMH to create the following:

  • Hierarchical facets

  • Discrete numeric range facets

  • Custom ordering of facet values

Create and manage facet collections

Depending on whether you want the collections to affect search or product listing pages, access the Search or Product Listings manager in the CMH.

Facet ordering

The order in which facets and their values are displayed in the facet collection is an important aspect of the user experience on a storefront. The CMH provides a combination of manual and automatic ordering options to ensure that the most relevant and important facets are always visible to visitors.

When creating a facet collection, merchandisers can choose to manually pin certain facets to the top of the list. They can also specify how many facets Coveo should select by relevance. This allows Coveo to dynamically determine which facets to display based on the visitor’s query or the listing page they’re on.

Facet values can also be sorted in different ways to enhance the filtering experience. Merchandisers can choose to sort facet values in alphanumeric order, by the number of products associated with each value, or by relevance.

Manually pinned facets

Manual pinning of facets allows merchandisers to control the order of facets in the storefront, ensuring they remain fixed in that position. Use this feature to lock specific filters at the top of the list so they’re always visible to visitors. For example, a clothing store may want to pin the Brand and Price facets at the top of the list to ensure visitors can always filter by these attributes.

Tip

Consider pinning that are used in most of your products (for example, Category, Brand, or Price). These attributes are less likely to be selected by relevance alone, so pinning them ensures they remain visible.

Facets selected by relevance

Facets selected by relevance let Coveo dynamically choose which facets to display based on the visitor’s query or the listing page they’re browsing. This feature leverages both the Facet Generator and the Dynamic Navigation Experience (DNE) model to optimize which facets appear, and in what order.

When a visitor performs a query or lands on a listing page, the Coveo Platform retrieves the most relevant products. At the same time, it determines which facets make the most sense to show for that context.

The Facet Generator looks at which product attributes stand out in the search results. It prioritizes attributes that are unusually common in the results compared to the overall product inventory. It also considers how often those attributes appear in the result set, with higher-ranked products being weighted more heavily. This ensures that the facets shown aren’t just popular—but also relevant to the visitor’s current context.

Finally, DNE re-ranks the selected facets based on actual visitor behavior, promoting the ones users interact with most often. This dynamic approach helps you maintain an adaptive experience—without having to constantly update your facet strategy by hand.

Tip

Generic attributes like category, brand, or price often appear across the entire catalog, so they’re rarely surfaced by relevance alone. To keep those key facets visible, you can manually pin them to the top of your collection.

The following diagram illustrates how Coveo evaluates and selects the most relevant facets to include in the facet collection:

Diagram of how facets selected by relevance works | Coveo
Example

A merchandiser managing an outdoor gear site wants to improve its facet selection.

To help visitors easily refine their searches, the merchandiser creates a facet collection in the CMH and manually pins the Brand, Size, and Price facets, ensuring that these always appear at the top of the facet list.

To further optimize the shopping experience, the merchandiser activates the Facets selected by relevance feature and sets the number of dynamically selected facets to 2. These facets will be added alongside the manually pinned ones. In total, 5 facets will appear on any page using this facet collection.

When a visitor searches for "backpacks", Coveo automatically determines which additional facets to display and the order in which they appear. In this case, the most relevant facets are Waterproofing and Volume. These are added to the manually pinned facets, resulting in the following facet list:

  • Brand

  • Size

  • Price

  • Waterproofing

  • Volume

Facet values sorting

Merchandisers can choose how facet values are sorted within the facet collection. The following sorting options are available:

  • Alphanumeric: Sorts facet values in ascending order based on their alphabetical and numerical characters. This is typically used for values like brand names or product codes where natural sorting is expected.

  • By number of products (high to low): Displays facet values in descending order, from the highest to the lowest number of associated products. Useful for highlighting the most common or popular values first.

  • By relevance: Displays facet values in an order influenced by relevance to the current query, based on index ranking and machine learning. This ensures the most contextually important values appear at the top.

Facet types

The Facet manager allows merchandisers to configure different types of facets to refine search results and improve product discovery. Each facet type serves a distinct purpose, helping visitors filter products efficiently based on various attributes. The following facet types are available for configuration:

Facet type Description

Regular (Selection list)

A standard facet that displays a list of selectable values, allowing visitors to refine their search based on predefined categories.
For example, a clothing store with a Color facet listing options like Red, Blue, and Green.

Hierarchical

Important

Hierarchical facets can’t currently be configured in the Facet manager.

A structured facet that organizes categories into multiple levels, allowing visitors to drill down through a product hierarchy.
For example, a furniture store with a Category facet structured as Living Room > Sofas > Sectionals.

Numerical facets

Numerical continuous

A facet that filters results within a numeric range, where values can take any number within the range.
This is commonly displayed as a slider.
For example, a price filter where visitors can set a range from $50 to $200.

Numerical discrete

Important

Numerical discrete facets can’t currently be configured in the Facet manager.

A facet that filters based on fixed numerical values, where only specific numbers can be selected rather than a range.
For example, a shoe store with a Size facet listing options like 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.